This volume introduces a new subseries of Philosophy and Medicine,
Classics of Medical Ethics. The purpose of this new subseries is to
bring out scholars' editions of major works in the history of medical
ethics and philosophy of medicine. This new subseries will target for
publication texts that are long out of print and difficult to access.
Each volume will contain an introduction to the writings on medical
ethics and philosophy of medicine produced by the original author. Each
volume will also contain a guide to the primary and major secondary
Hterature, to facilitate teaching and scholarship in bioethics,
philosophy of medicine, and history of medicine. Texts will be presented
in their origi- nal style and will provide pagination of the original,
so that citations can be made either to the original text or to the page
numbers in these vol- umes. Finally, each volume will be well indexed,
again to facilitate teaching and research. Bioethics and philosophy of
medicine - the former more so than the latter - have an insufficiently
developed understanding of themselves as having a history. As a
consequence, these fields lack the maturity that critical dialogue of
the past with the present provides for other fields and disciplines of
the humanities. To the extent that this problem is due to the fact that
major primary historical sources are not readily available, this
subseries will contribute to the further development and maturation of
bioethics and philosophy of medicine as fields of the humanities.